Refinished Bedside Table

It's finally finished! And if you count the sander that I bought as an investment, then the whole project cost only $16, including the table itself!

This project was a great project for a beginner like myself and it has me thinking about what we're going to do when we really start the hunt for a new dining room table. Our current one is on it's last legs and it only seats 6. With five people in our family, that just won't work if we'd ever like to have guests over to eat. But I'm getting a bit off topic here. 

Back to the nightstand. When we transitioned Jake into his big boy bed, we put a small Ikea Lack table that we had in his room next to the bed as a night stand. It was okay, but I really had something else in mind. I wanted a place he could have a lamp that was out of the way and a place for books/water/cars/whatever a boy needs in the night. 

As I was perusing our local ReStore one Saturday, I found it! Fifteen bucks, sold!

As you can see though, it needed some work. No problem, I thought, a little elbow grease will get this looking great. 

So I got started. I had some wood sandpaper and started sanding. 20 minutes in I had gotten nowhere. 

So I packed up my gang and we headed to Home Depot to get an electric sander. 

Boom! All sanded in 15 minutes. Totally worth the money spent because I only ever have hour long chunks of time to complete projects. And every house needs a sander, right ;)

I used some leftover blue paint that we had to paint the legs. Then I flipped it over and used the last of some stain to stain the top surfaces. 

I used the same blue to paint the interior sides for a small pop of color on top. 

I used a spray finish by Minwax to seal it. I was very surprised how easy it was to use the spray. I gave it two coats and let I try for about 30 minutes in between them. 

I then used my Silhouette to cut an anchor shape (I bought the design for $1) out of some gray vinyl I had leftover from another project. Easy peasy! 

Right now Jake's room has a pirate theme, but I didn't seal the vinyl down because I'm not so sure I will want to keep it on forever. That's the beauty of it though. I don't have to if I don't want to!

I'm so pumped to try a bigger piece of furniture next time!